A Facebook user claimed a Home Depot manager in Spokane Valley, WA, rudely refused to provide a veterans discount to a customer.

CLAIM

RATING

ORIGIN

On 17 August 2015, Facebook user David Carleton posted a first-person account of a Home Depot manager in Spokane Valley, WA, supposedly (rudely) refusing to provide a veterans’ discount to a customer:

We reached out to both parties to try to obtain more information about this incident. Our public relations contact at Home Depot told us that:

While we can’t verify his depiction of what happened, there seems to be some confusion about our veterans’ discount policy. The discount is available to all veterans on major patriotic holidays including Veterans Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day. We’re also one of only a few retailers that provides an everyday discount to active-duty, National Guard, Coast Guard and reservists, as well as retired and service-connected disabled service members, and their spouses.

Given the date on the original Facebook post (i.e., mid-August), it didn’t seem likely that the described encounter could have taken place on one of the designated patriotic holidays when Home Depot’s veterans’ discount was in effect. Without more information, we couldn’t determine whether the issue was that a customer was seeking a discount at a time when it didn’t apply, or whether the real issue was something else.

(A Home Depot rep told us that a store manager could choose to offer a veterans’ discount even on days when it does not apply, but they are discouraged from doing so in order to ensure consistency of application across the chain of Home Depot stores.)